


bound for pain

by Fox_the_Hermit



Category: Bleach
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-09
Updated: 2019-08-09
Packaged: 2020-08-13 15:26:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20176531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fox_the_Hermit/pseuds/Fox_the_Hermit
Summary: While soulmates do share some particular sense, they usually do not share all of it. Only sharing the smell of flowers or the taste of sweet things or the sight of all things green or some such is the most common manifestation of this trait.[UraMayu Week Week Day Three - Soulmates]





	bound for pain

_ Everyone in Soul Society has a soulmate. A soul that resonates so perfectly with another, that they might as well be one - so far as to start sharing a sense at some point in their lives. One person in two bodies, almost, some say. _

Kisuke hears it first somewhere on the streets of even the outer districts of Rukongai, where most don’t live long enough - or can’t cross enough districts - to find their soulmate. He doesn’t disbelieve it, not when there are so many tales, not when he once saw a fellow street rat taken by nobles due to a supposed connection, not when he saw two women, one throwing apples, the other catching them or dodging with her eyes closed, using the eyes of her friend.

Soulmates are of no concern to him, not when his priorities are finding enough food and shelter and warmth to keep going, to tend to the bruises and scratches and sharp, straight cuts he keeps accumulating from soul king knows where.

_ The pair is always going to be the best of friends, or siblings, or even partners. _

He doubts that particular saying, however, and even when he finds his way into the home of the Shihouin… Yes, there are a rare few pairs there to observe, people seemingly perfectly content with each other.

There are more things he can’t help learning despite his vague disinterest, when allowed to sit in on Yoruichi’s lessons.

_ While soulmates do share some particular sense, they usually do not share all of it. Only sharing the smell of flowers or the taste of sweet things or the sight of all things green or some such is the most common manifestation of this trait. _

_ Some believe that this is meant to allow two souls to find each other, to be able to recognise each other by figuring out where they are, or what they are doing, or who they are, or what they look like. Once they encounter each other, the sharing becomes stronger, more intense, the connection snapping into place. _

Some of them are matches between nobles and Rukongai souls - but the reason those are allowed, as he learns, is not because they want to achieve some higher happiness or connection. Or, rather, that is not the reason the connections are permitted.

_ The strong connection, the developed relationship between the two people, gives both parties more power in battle, amplifies and mutates zanpakuto abilities to be almost unrecognisable. _

It’s merely a matter of making the clan _ stronger _.

The moment Yoruichi will start sharing a sense with her soulmate, that person will be searched for diligently. Of course, that could be years and decades away, even a century, if the soul is still in the living world.

“What do you think it would be like, having a soulmate?” she asks, sitting with him under a tree on a pile of red leaves, the shouting of the servants meant to be supervising her too far off in the distance to be a concern yet.

She’s smiling at him, cheerful and contemplative, golden eyes gleaming in the warm, gentle sun.

“...I don’t know,” he says, truthfully. Soulmates sound far too complicated, frankly, and he would rather pursue his ideas and inventions and the study of hell butterflies. “Perhaps it would help with my training.”

His kidou skills are good, and chasing Yoruichi around at the behest of the servants is improving his shunpo almost as much as hers, but in terms of raw power- he’s not very far yet.

“What sense would you like to share?” he asks in return.

The calls are growing louder. They’ll have to run soon, if Yoruichi doesn’t want to be dragged off to another lesson on manners.

Or maybe to a hakuda training session. Kisuke isn’t sure he wants to go, not with the long, deep cut in his arm that happened overnight, hidden from discovery by bandages, barely scabbed over with with the use of kaido.

He’s getting better at that, but not yet _ good enough _. Or maybe the cuts are getting much deeper. 

For some reason - he thinks they might be _ dissectional. _ Straight, precise, deep - and there are phantom pains _ inside _ the cut, spreading from it, for the first while afterwards. But who would do that to him in his sleep?

How?

Golden eyes blink in thought. 

“I don’t know. What are the choices?”

“Well, I suppose- there might be some records in the library.”

They don’t get that far, the library’s keeper ratting them out to the tutors, but Yoruichi’s curiosity has ignited a vague interest in Kisuke,

Is there some pattern, perhaps, or limits? What is the most two souls can share?

How does it all even work?

Hearing is the most common shared sense, Kisuke learns from countless lists and diaries. Sight and smell and taste are close behind. Touch, too - and through the diaries, he gets such a _ very _ thorough education on why the more romantically-inclined covet it so much, that he breaks out in random blushing for a _ week _.

People are _ ridiculous _, and he will never understand them.

And that’s fine. He has his interests and projects and Yoruichi. He doesn’t need more than that.

But the common traits are far less interesting than the uncommon ones, even if it takes him getting into the academy and its library to access the longer, more complete lists there, rosters of thousands of shinigami over time, rather than the smaller lists of all members of the Shihouin clan.

Dreams. Phobias. Emotions. Thoughts, even, proving that romantic tall tales that are passed around have more than a grain of truth to what is possible - even if Kisuke doubts that this is a proof that soulmates are _ meant to be _.

Certainly, there might be very happy pairs indeed - but there may well be pairs where things don’t work out.

But how does it happen?

The research _ consumes _ him without him noticing, something driving his curiosity. The annoyance over boring classes, perhaps - he and Yoruichi will graduate within this first year if his predictions of the exams are correct.

Maybe the exhaustion of trying to bond with his asauchi and failing.

Maybe it is the strange injuries that have followed him since he woke up in Rukongai three decades ago.

“One more hour,” he keeps saying to Yoruichi, hunched over stacks of records and diaries and notes, or watching some pairs of bonded classmates like a hawk, small scanners hidden in his sleeves, monitoring and analysing reiatsu signatures.

There’s no emotional component required for the bond to work, he finds.

He writes it down in the margins of textbooks and scrolls.

_ The sharing of some aspect of a sense is caused by the souls essentially bleeding into each other and merging into one. That is responsible for amplifying their powers tenfold in battle, mutating shikai and bankai into new and unique forms while they fight together. _

It’s impossible to create such a bond artificially - and with the kind of things that have been attempted, it has been rendered illegal to even try. That’s why the nobles submit to the indignity of adopting a rat from the outer-most districts. It’s that, or lose potential power.

It is possible to sever a bond, if one of the partners dies, and it is possible for the bond to change, if one of the souls undergoes a massive change. But there’s no way to sever the bond from a distance, on one’s own.

Nowhere in his research, however, can he find a confirmation that souls can share pain. Maybe even injuries.

“It would make… sense,” he says to Yoruichi and Tessai-san, staring into the distance. Bruises have bloomed across his body overnight, arms and back and thighs, and he’s frankly too used to them to care to fix them. “Pain, at the very least. It’s a part of touch.”

“Why have you gotten so… interested?” Yoruichi asks, and her eyes are fixed on his face, the shadows under his eyes. 

“I am merely curious about the ways souls work,” he tries to keep his voice light. “The existence of soulmates raises some questions about how the particles can and can not affect one another.” 

“Well, don’t do anything illegal - now when we’re both so close to being admitted to the Onmitsukido.” He doesn’t think she believes him, exactly, but she doesn’t pry further.

What he said is not exactly a lie, in a way. 

He’s just more interested in severing bonds, than maintaining or forging them.

He’s just finished taking the shunpo exam for the Onmi, out of breath, walking away from the testing area - he passed the requirement, but the instructors were interested in seeing how much faster the ward of the Shihouin could go.

Yoruichi is walking towards to congratulate him - maybe tease him about his near-flub on one of the steps, something that only she would notice - and suddenly horror paints itself on her face, her eyes fixed on his chest.

He looks down, bringing his hand up to it, automatically, and-

There’s blood.

That shouldn’t be there, he thinks, vaguely. That shouldn’t be there at all.

A damp, growing patch of red on his clothes, right along the centre of his chest.

The pain rushes in as he watches, fingers red when he takes them away from his chest. Or maybe it’s the dizziness that he’s feeling first, really, just shock, watching the patch grow, starting at the collarbones and going further down in a straight line.

He should sit down.

He should get something, maybe a cloth, and apply pressure to the wound, make sure to stay on his back to decrease the speed of blood loss.

Should call for help.

Yoruichi’s broken into shunpo to get to him, already supporting him as he’s sinking to his knees in a sort of ridiculous stupor.

There’s things he should be doing to treat this injury.

And he should have expected this, he thinks, faintly, still caught up in the sheer _ surprise _.

The cuts had gotten deeper, more extensive over time - why would the chest be safe from the explorations?

There’s quite a lot of blood on his clothes now.

That is… not good.


End file.
